Crushing Defeats

Chess can be a motherfucker. You're bound to have games that make you feel crappy. 

My most recent was a few days ago. I won't go into the details of the game but it ended with a pawn race in which I queened first so I could deliver checks before my opponent could queen. I could find a thousand checks but they had one pawn that was one square from promotion and their king was next to it. Smelled like a perp to me. I checked a few times and while I was trying to find more useful checks, my opponent offered a draw. I had nine seconds on my clock and so I accepted it. 

Of course, I had a win. :(

I just had to get his king to blockade his own queening square and then march my king over. It's so simple in retrospect but in the moment, all I could see was a few pointless checks I could give and it'd end in a perpetual. So I took the draw and found the mate a minute later in analysis.

I was upset about it. I think I'm pretty good about getting over things like that thankfully but it still sucked. I'm lucky it ended in a draw!

Here we are a few days later though. I'm not upset, I've got those couple of ratings points back (only took one game), and I gained a valuable lesson: I know what a winning position looks when I have a queen and my opponent has an advanced pawn. I know the method to win it. I didn't know it before. There are a thousand endgame situations like that that the beginner doesn't know what to do. I sure didn't. But now I do. Now I can have 0.2 seconds on my clock in that position and I'll know to check the king again and again until I see the plan.

These takeaway lessons are extremely beneficial to your attitude towards chess improvement and your general happiness. 

My current rating is more or less where it would have been had I won that game instead of a draw. The value of mini lessons like this far outweigh a few fake internet chess points.